“You won’t have it?” She widened her eyes in amazement. “Excuse me, Mr. Broussard, but you do not have a leash around my neck or ownership papers with my name on them. I do as I please.”
“You do not.” His head lowered, his nose nearly touching her, as anger sparked inside her like wildfire flaring out of control.
Her hands pushed out, flattening against his chest and trying to push him back. Trying, because he wasn’t budging an inch.
“You’re fired,” she snapped.
“You can’t fire me; you can only quit.” He smirked. “Until that time you will obey the precautions made for your safety, or you will deal with me.”
“I’m just real scared of you!” Her hands went to her hips, her lips flattened. “What are you going to do, growl me to death? Make me watch baseball until my eyes fall out of my head? Oh no, wait, you’re going to take all my TV dinners.” Mock fear rounded her eyes. “Oh, Saban, I’m so scared. Please don’t.”
He growled. It wasn’t a hard vibration of sound, rather a subtle rumble that had the more cautious part of her brain urging wariness. And she might have paid attention if she weren’t so damned mad.
“You are in my way.” She lifted herself until her nose touched his. “Get out of it.”
His expression changed then, shifted. His eyes narrowed, and the savage, remorseless determination she’d heard all Breeds possessed flashed in his eyes.
She should have run then and there. She should have turned tail and run as fast as those rabbits he’d mentioned earlier.
The minute his hands latched on her upper arms, the second she realized his intention and his head lowered, she should have slammed her knee into his groin and had done with it. If she’d had time.
Between one second and the next his lips covered hers, his tongue pushed between her lips as they parted in surprise, and oh hell in a handbasket, she was lost. Those eatable, kissable lips were devouring hers. His tongue stroked inside her mouth as the taste of heated spice filled her senses.
His kiss had a taste. Not the normal tastes a kiss had, but the taste of a wild promise, a desert afternoon, heated and filled with mystery and hunger.
Natalie found herself melting against him. She shivered. That hard, luscious body braced her weight as his hands cupped her rear and lifted her closer. His head slanted, the kiss grew deeper, a hard growl rasping his throat as she let her lips surround his probing tongue, and she sought more of his taste. It was there, each time she caressed the tongue twining with hers, subtle, urging her to consume more, to hold him closer, to devour this kiss.
And it terrified her. She felt her independence, hard-won and imperative, fighting beneath the claiming she could feel coming, screaming out in warning until she jerked back, struggled, stumbled from his grip as she stared back at him, panting from the need suddenly tearing through her. She lifted her hand, touched his lips. Lips that mesmerized her, left her aching, a miracle of pleasure, just as she had known they would be.
“You’re mine.” There was no sexy teasing in his voice, no flirty seductiveness. His dark eyes glittered with predatory awareness and with triumph.
Her hand dropped away from him.
“You’re insane,” she gasped.
“Mine.”
TWO
Saban watched as Natalie’s eyes grew wider, a hint of fear flashing in the molasses depths, mixing with the anger and the arousal.
He knew what he had done. Knew he had spilled the potent mating hormone to her system in that kiss, and he knew he should feel guilty. He should feel remorse pounding through his head rather than satisfaction.
“You feel it now, don’t you, Natalie.” He drew her name out, tasted it on his tongue and relished the sound of it.
He had kept himself from using it, held it back, knowing he couldn’t say it without the breath of ownership in his tone, as it was now.
And she heard it, as he had always known she would.
“I feel your insanity.” She moved quickly away from him, wariness tightening her body. Saban watched her, letting his gaze track each movement as he inhaled the scent of her, tasted her against his tongue. He could still taste her; beneath the taste of the mating hormone was the taste of her passion, of the needs she kept tightly bottled inside her and the battle she waged to hold it all in. His Natalie, as intelligent as she was, as softly rounded and sensual as the feminine core of her was, was disillusioned, hurt, all because of one weak-minded, inept man that hadn’t the good sense to see the gift God had given him.
And now he faced that woman, knowing he had committed the ultimate crime in her eyes once she learned what that kiss actually meant. He had taken her choice from her. He had begun something which tied her irrevocably to him and thereby took away the control she so highly revered.
“I’m not insane,” he finally sighed. “At least no longer.” He swiped his hands through his loose hair and stared around the kitchen.
Damn, he should have known better than to listen to Cassie and her lectures on women who did not possess Breed DNA. He had taken advice from an eighteen-year-old, had seriously considered every word she had said, and now he’d pay for it.
“What do you mean? No longer?” Her eyes were narrowed, and her body was burning. The sweet, spicy scent of her desire wrapped around his senses and had him clenching his teeth at the need to taste it, to taste her.